The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are bringing back star wide receiver and former Steeler Antonio Brown on a one-year deal that could be worth up to $6.25 million, according to AB’s agent.
The Bucs made room for the deal by negotiating with tight end Cameron Brate to restructure his deal to only be about a $3.5 million cap hit, with two of those magic voidable years being added onto his deal.
The deal puts an exclamation mark on what has been an incredibly productive offseason for the Bucs, who are bringing back pretty much every important contributor from their Super Bowl roster. There were a lot of question marks heading into the offseason, but give the Bucs front office a lot of credit. They’ve been able to do what teams like the Saints and Eagles have done for years; magically create cap space.
Of course, this is all at the expense of their future. But, as I keep saying, if you can repeat as Super Bowl champs, why not continue to build as much talent as possible?
For the Bucs, they’ve been able to build a dominant team while retaining all of their draft picks. They arguably should be even better this next year, as TB12 can finally get comfortable with this offense—rule changes be damned—and whoever Tampa Bay brings in through the draft can come in and immediately contribute, especially if GM Jason Licht continues to hit on his draft picks.
Speaking of the draft, it kicks off this Thursday night, with the first round beginning in Cleveland at 8 p.m. The Bucs, of course, are holding the last pick of that round. So, we’ll see what they do with it. Thousands of mocks have the Bucs doing wildly different things, for example former-Bucs-QB-turned-analyst Chris Simms had them selecting QB Justin Fields out of Ohio State, if you really want to take any stock in that.
But we should learn by now to trust Jason Licht and what he does for this team. Afterall, he does have a Super Bowl ring to back it up now.
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This article appears in Apr 22-28, 2021.